Here are some straightforward prospecting and sales tips for growing your business on LinkedIn.
LinkedIn is a referral engine! Connect with your friends or associates on LinkedIn by reaching out to your friends, family members and co-workers and other 1st degree connections that are connected to your target audience and can make an introduction on your behalf!
People buy from people they trust, know and like and a referral is one of the easiest sales to close and maintain because of that trust.
Here is some great news that should get you excited about the possibilities of prospecting on LinkedIn now and in the future!
LinkedIn is already a huge network, but it about to become even bigger! Microsoft and LinkedIn will merge in 2017 creating a network of over 1.5 billion professionals! YOUR TARGET AUDIENCE IS ON LinkedIn.
HOW DO YOU FIND YOUR TARGET AUDIENCE AND CONNECT WITH THEM ON LINKEDIN?
A buyer’s journey starts with awareness. Awareness of your name, service, product or company.
1. PERFORM A BOOLEAN SEARCH
A regular and very broad search would contain just Non-profit. This type of search brings up hundreds of thousands if not millions of results and is impossible to use to make meaningful connections.
A Boolean search would include search terms such as non-profit AND (Title) CEO or President or Director
2. USE SEARCH FILTERS
Search filters allow you to narrow down your prospecting search even more to find the best search results for your search criteria.
Examples of Common Search Filters: Location, Industry, Company Size
A Boolean search with filters allows you to narrow down your search criteria to a very specific group of individuals. From here, you can check for those 1st-degree connections and ask for referrals.
3. If you made it this far, you should take advantage of the Saved Searches feature. This allows you to save between 500 and 1000 prospects in labeled saved searches to refer to at a later date without having to type in the search criteria again. Allowing you to work smarter, not harder!
Here are three more great tips for networking and prospecting on LinkedIn that people often overlook.
4. Be strategic about individuals who are newly hired or just got a raise or a promotion.
**Newly hired decision makers are 10x more likely to make a purchase than established ones**
LinkedIn is releasing a search feature in 2017 that will allow you to search based on when people change jobs. This will make finding newly hired decision makers much easier to find.
5. Check the Whose Viewed Your Profile section and segment them into potential partner or potential prospect. Once you have done this, reach out to those prospects and/or partners!
Reach Out Options:
- Send InMail (Premium Account and only 15 per month)
- Join a Common Group – this gives you the right to send “common group message” 15 per month
- Send a Connection Request (customize message) — my favorite option
Scripts for Reaching Out To Prospects
Thank you for visiting my profile. Would you be open to connecting on LinkedIn?
(Permission Based – Open Ended Questions like the one above = 60% higher connection rate)
6. Finally, look at prospects profiles! Just by looking at your prospects profiles, they will see that you have viewed their profile and they may reach out to you because they need your services. This only works if you position yourself as an industry leader and knowledge expert on your LinkedIn profile. If you look like someone that can truly help them, they will be interested in reaching out to learn more.
These tips for prospecting on LinkedIn should help you reach new prospects within weeks if not days. Just be sure that your profile is up to date and makes you look like a professional with deep industry knowledge. Publish a few articles on your profile and ask for some endorsements from your colleagues or current clients. Putting time and effort into the above tasks and you will get results. This is not magic, so hard work is involved, but the hard work does pay off here!
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